To add bones in Blender, we need to be in Object Mode, which can be changed by hitting the Tab key or by selecting “Object Mode” from the drop-down list.

After switching over to Object Mode, proceed as follows:

1. Hit “Shift+A” on your keyboard to open the Add menu.
2. Click on “Armature” to add a single bone to the scene.

For a full demonstration, we’ll need a model to align and link the bones to. We’ve chosen an arm file from Free3D and imported that into our scene using the typical procedure.

With the arm model and a single bone in the scene, we’ll want to align the bone with the arm. To do so, we need to switch back to Edit Mode (hit the Tab key). After switching over to Edit Mode, do the following:

1. Hit ‘A’ on the keyboard to select the whole bone.
2. Hit ‘R’ to rotate the bone, ‘G’ to grab it, and ‘S’ to scale it, aligning the bone with the model (in this case, the lower arm) as accurately as possible. The ball joints can also be grabbed individually and moved into position, which will scale the whole bone proportionally.

After aligning the bone to the model, we’ll now want to connect additional bones to build out the whole arm. You’ll want to stay in Edit Mode to extrude the bone:

1. Click on the ball joint at the head of the forearm bone, then hit ‘E’ on the keyboard.
2. A new bone connected to the joint of the forearm will appear, which can be dragged and aligned with the hand of the model. Left click to place the bone.
3. Continue to extrude bones to build the rest of the hand and fingers by selecting the ball joint at the tip of a bone, hitting ‘E’ on the keyboard, dragging to align, then clicking to place the bone.
4. Once all the bones are laid down, you can select each bone individually, then hit ‘S’ to scale it or use other tools to make final adjustments to the skeleton.

Switching Bone Direction

It’s generally good practice to start bones at a base and build the system outward, for example, from shoulder to finger. By default, the first bone you put down will be the “parent”, which means its movements will be transmitted to the subsequent child bones. This ensures bones are aligned on the same axis of rotation and will make the rigging process smoother.

However, sometimes we need to go back and add another bone to the base of our system, so let’s see how to change the direction of a bone and reassign the parent bone by adding the upper arm bone to our skeleton.

1. Select the ball joint at the tail end of the forearm bone, and hit ‘E’ to extrude a bone. You’ll notice this bone is facing the opposite direction to the rest of our bone system.
2. To change the direction of a bone, click on it, then either head to the “Armature” menu in the upper toolbar or right-click. Select “Switch Direction”. The upper arm bone should now be facing the same direction as the rest of the system, but it’s not yet connected.
3. Select the forearm bone and head to the Bone Properties menu on the left-hand side of the viewport and open the “Relations” menu.
4. Notice the “Parent” field is blank. Select it and choose the object that corresponds to the upper arm bone.
5. Finally, check the “Connected” box directly underneath the Parent field to join the upper arm bone to the rest of the arm system.

A unit bone structure of the whole arm has now been made!

You’ve now successfully added bones to your model in Blender! For complex models, a lot of bones can be involved, so it can become confusing while rigging to know what bone you want to change. Thus, categorization and renaming of the bones is always a good idea, if not essential! To do so, stay in Edit Mode, then do the following:

1. Click on the bone that you want to rename.
2. Go to the Outliner (the section of the screen that displays all the objects present in the screen as a list on the top right side of the 3D Viewport) and double-click on the highlighted bone to rename it.
3. Different bones can be categorized by right-clicking on a bone in the Outliner, then selecting “New Collection” from the menu. This will create a new collection and add the selected bone to it. You can then add more bones to this or other collections.

After following the above steps, switch back to Object Mode to link the bones to the arm model:

1. Select both the model and armature by left-clicking and holding “Shift” on your keyboard. Make sure the armature is selected last so that it becomes the parent.
2. Press “Ctrl + P” so that the “Set Parent To” menu appears.
3. Select “With Automatic Weights” under the “Ameture Deform” option.

Now you have successfully linked your bones to the arm mesh. This means you can now start “posing” the bones by heading into the Pose Mode (located at the top-left, in the menu with Edit and Object Modes). If we have followed all the steps correctly we should see that the arm will move together with the positioning of the bones.

Adding bones can be a little tricky, so here are some hints:

• Locking: Users can “lock” bones to prevent any accidental changes while working on other bones. To lock a bone, in Edit Mode, hit “Shift+W” and select “Lock”. The lock can be disabled later by expanding the “Context Collection Boolean Set” menu that pops up after locking the bone, then clicking “Disable” under “Type”.
• Duplicate: A bone or a connection of bones can be duplicated in Blender, which can be very useful if a model has two of the same parts (like arms). Instead of making and editing bones twice or more, simply duplicate the selected bones in Edit Mode. Hit “Shift+D”, and the selected bones will now be duplicated and can be moved and aligned with the model.
• Mirroring: While character modeling or creating symmetrical models, there’s no need to make every single bone. In fact, you can create bones for half of a model and simply mirror them. To do so, you need to be in Edit Mode. Select the bones to be mirrored, right-click to open the Armature Menu, then hover over the “Mirror” option. Here, select the axis along which you want the bones to be mirrored.

Here are some resources related to adding bones for you to refer to:

• Blender’s online manual has reference materials about every function. It also has a downloadable reference manual on the home page.
• Wikibooks also offers material about Blender functions, sparing no detail.
• Reddit has answers to everything. Answered by people around the world, all you need to do is search for the keywords related to your problems, and you’ll likely find something helpful!
• Blender has an official YouTube channel, where it posts tutorials related to various functions and videos about the latest releases and features.
• There are a number of amazing Blender-related YouTube channels like Blender Guru, CG Geek, tutor4u, Ducky3D, and YanSculpts. All you need to do is search “Blender” and start learning!